


This is Your Hourglass (It's Running Out of Sand)

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Gen, In which the deathly hallows get a bit more deathly, Invisibility Cloak (Harry Potter), Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Not Pottermore Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25345282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Once upon a time, the cloak was owned by Death.It hides far more secrets than just invisibility.
Relationships: James Potter & His Parents, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 59
Kudos: 264





	This is Your Hourglass (It's Running Out of Sand)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MegMarch1880](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegMarch1880/gifts).



> Happy birthday, MegMarch1880!
> 
> I've been wanting to write this one for YEARS. I'm so glad I finally carved out some time to make it work.

James Potter is born already running out of time.

At St. Mungo’s, the Healers assure them that everything is fine: The Potters have a perfectly healthy baby son. 

And for now, that’s exactly what James is. Tiny and perfect.

But there is another test that must be done, and Charlus performs it once they return home. 

He waits until Dorea is asleep, and then he slips into the nursery, wearing the cloak that has been passed down from father to son and mother to daughter for countless generations now. 

The world looks strange from beneath the cloak. The world wavers into a slightly blurred unreality, and the people -

He is always very careful which people he looks at.

James is lying in the bassinet, and he is still tiny and perfect, but now there is another figure, transparent and wavering like a ghost, that is laid over him. 

It’s still James, of course. James in his early twenties - mid-twenties, at the latest, if his son keeps a youthful face, and, oh, how Charlus is now praying he does.

His son will be a handsome man. A smiling man. 

And he will be a young man when the Reaper comes to call.

These are the rules: Only the owner of the cloak can see the secrets it reveals.

And because it is an invisibility cloak, the only person whose death can never be revealed is the owner themselves. 

(When he is small, Charlus’s father tells him that the cloak has been given to their family by Death himself.)

(Charlus never believes him. Not until his father officially passes the cloak onto him, and he puts it on for the first time as its true owner.)

(He believes his father after that.)

His wife doesn’t know. Not exactly. He’s tried to tell her before, but his tongue always turns dead in his mouth.

Death keeps its secrets.

But Dorea knows all too well that the Potters are well-known for scheduling their own funerals and rarely being wrong on the dates, so perhaps it is not too surprising when he finds her awake in their bedroom after he has at last managed to choke back his sobs.

“Well?” she whispers, and her voice catches in the dark.

“I think,” he says, and he swallows, because he has to speak carefully here and because it hurts more than he can bear to say it, “I think life is too short to deny children much of anything. Don’t you?”

Wizards can live for well over a hundred years. James will live for roughly twenty. That’s so much living to cram into such a short time. There are some things, even still, that they’ll have to put their foot down on, but so much - 

With so little time, if it makes him happy, what does it matter?

“I think children should be happy,” she agrees, and her voice shakes.

But Dorea was a Black before her marriage, and she is used to keeping a stiff upper lip and carrying on. That’s what they both do. They carry on.

And, in Dorea’s case, she carries James so much that Charlus wonders if the baby remembers ever in his life being set down.

They don’t want to spoil him _rotten._ They don’t want him to turn out greedy and selfish; greedy and selfish people are so rarely happy.

But to spoil him just a little, to indulge him whenever it will do no harm -

Sometimes “no” must unavoidably said. But they have wealth and magic and so much love for their son it hurts.

It is easy to indulge him.

James does not throw tantrums. He asks politely and smiles in a way that his mum’s friends always coo over as charming, and that is usually enough to get him what he wants.

He has heaps of presents every birthday and Christmas and sometimes “just because.” They have vacations every year, and ever since his mum discovered his “List of Adventures,” scrawled out in a childishly large hand, they have let him help pick where to go, and he crosses out the locations carefully, tongue sticking out between he teeth, and adds more locations to the list.

At Quidditch matches and Diagon Alley, he sometimes hears other parents tell their kids that they’re not old enough for something, that they can do it when they’re older, but he doesn’t really get what that’s about. Sure, there are some things, like Hogwarts or tasting whatever’s in that flask Dad keeps in his desk, that simply have to wait, but most things? Things like flying a broom or getting an owl or staying up to watch meteor showers?

Life’s too short to wait for those things, his dad says, and James embraces that philosophy wholeheartedly, even if he’s not quite sure yet what philosophy means.

His parents are a little weird sometimes, he guesses. They never ask him what he wants to be when he grows up, even though that’s all their friends seem to care about asking him. It’s the one thing they don’t seem to think life’s too short to wait for, and it’s a little strange, maybe, but it’s not like he has much to compare it to; none of his parents’ friends have children his age, all of theirs are in their final years of Hogwarts or already grown, so maybe this is just what parents are like with their own kids. And besides, it’s not really much of a question. He’s going to follow in his dad’s footsteps, although sometimes he thinks he might like to take a couple of years to be a professional Quidditch player first. He can do it, he’s sure of it; everyone says he’s already good.

He doesn’t think about it much. He doesn’t have to; brooms are fast, candy is sweet, and when he’s tired out by a day full of both, his parents tuck him in after as many bedtime stories as he likes, and they tell him they love him more than the moon, more than the sun, more than magic itself. As long as they’re here, they promise, he has nothing to fear.

He goes to sleep quickly, warm and safe and always, always, believing them. 

Mum and Dad argue a little over whether or not he should go to Hogwarts, which bewilders him a little. Of course he’s going to Hogwarts. Where else would he go? Durmstrang?

“You could stay home,” his dad offers, looking a little lost and a little pale. “Just if you wanted. We could teach you well enough here.”

“But _Quidditch,_ Dad,” James says, unable to believe his parents could have forgotten this obvious fact. “I have to win the cup for Gryffindor!”

Mum sniffs. “You never know,” she says, “A brilliant boy like you could be a Ravenclaw. Or even,” she says, with a twinkle of mischief, “a Slyther-“

 _“Mum,”_ he says in horror, and she laughs and ruffles his hair.

She’s shooting a significant look at his Dad as she does, and he never hears them argue about it again, so that nonsense is apparently settled, and he’s glad of it. 

(They’re a little weepy when he gets on the train - even _Mum’s_ got tears in her eyes, and she never cries - but a lot of the other parents are too, so he doesn’t think anything of it.)

Hogwarts is brilliant. He’s going to have to wait another year to make the team since first years aren’t allowed brooms, but the castle is awesome, and his new mates are fantastic, and so are all the pranks they’re planning together.

Snivellus is less awesome, and so is the fact that Lily Evans apparently prefers him over James for some inexplicable reason, but he doesn’t let it bother him much. Snivellus being around just means they have a perfect target for pranks, and Lily is a _girl,_ so it’s not like they would have been hanging out much anyway.

He gets tons of parcels from home. Way more than Sirius, who mostly gets Howlers when he gets anything at all, and still easily twice the number that Remus and Peter get.

He gets why Remus doesn’t get more - the kid’s running home for family emergencies every few weeks anyway, they probably do all their catching up then - and he gets why Sirius doesn’t - because his parents are the actual worst.

And also related to his mum somehow, though he’s not sure of all the specifics. Obviously, his mum got all the awesome in that family and there wasn’t enough left for anyone else. Except Sirius.

He’s not sure why Peter doesn’t get more though. Sure, he gets a letter every week or so, but a lot can happen in a week! Don’t his parents want daily updates? Don’t they want to make sure he’s got everything he needs?

James shakes his head and decides, after great consideration, not to mention it. Just because he’s got the best parents doesn’t mean he has to rub it in everyone’s faces.

He congratulates himself on his tact and goes back to sharing out the sweets and pranking supplies his parents included in their latest parcel because obviously, he has the best parents in Gryffindor and possibly the world.

Even with all those letters, it’s still good to go home for the holidays, even if he _does_ miss his friends. His parents have promised that he can invite them over before term starts back up, though, so really he won’t have to go too long without them, assuming they can come. 

And then his dad gives him the best pranking equipment ever, and James thinks he might just explode from excitement.

He’s got an _invisibility cloak._

“Sometimes people will look a little older while you’re wearing it,” his dad warns him. “You can still see what they really look like under that, though. It’s just - just a little quirk.”

He can see what his dad means - Mum and Dad both look a little older when he looks at them from underneath the cloak, but it’s not like it’s a huge difference. It’s no big deal, really.

He can’t wait to show this to Sirius and the others when they come.

He reads up on the cloak all over his break. There’s not much about it in any officially published books, but some of his ancestors wrote about it, and he pores through the library, looking for references. He’s not supposed to look at some of these, technically - it’s one of the few things his parents are strict on - but he wants to know everything about his fantastic new cloak, and he’s careful not to get caught.

He’s eleven years old and easily distracted, so it takes him a bit to connect the dots.

But he’s also brilliant, top of all his classes except for the ones Lily’s beating him in, and he’s been hearing family history in the guise of bedtime stories his whole life long.

He pieces together most of the truth before long.

At first he thinks that bit’s just as cool as the rest. It’s creepy, sure, but that just makes it better. 

(He doesn’t think about the way his parents look almost entirely the same under the cloak as they do the rest of the time. He’s a child still, and as far as he’s concerned, his parents have looked pretty much the same his whole life long, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t continue to look just the same for ages and ages to come.)

He tries to tell his friends about it when they come, but his tongue stumbles over the words just like Dad warned might happen, and none of them seem to see it, so he gives it up in frustration as a bad job. Even without the spine tingling creepiness of it, the others are still very impressed.

He looks at them under it after they’re asleep. It’s just morbid curiosity, really.

He can still see them as they are now, but he can see that ghostly overlay too. Remus and Sirius look _old,_ like, _seriously_ old. They have _grey_ in their hair he thinks, though it’s hard to be sure.

Peter, though - Peter worries him. Peter looks - Well, James isn’t good at judging ages yet, but he looks about the age of their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and that’s - that’s too young to die.

His mouth goes a little dry, and he takes it off. 

_It’s fine,_ he tells himself. _I’ll change it, that’s all._

He pointedly doesn’t think of how many Potters have tried.

And how none of them have succeeded.

(He asks his dad later, years later when he’s willing to admit that he’s figured it out, and even though he keeps it hypothetical, general, he’s never seen his dad look so worn down.)

(“We have choices,” he says firmly. “We can live whatever lives we want to live. You can do and be whatever you want to be, James. But when the hourglass runs out of sand, there’s no avoiding that.”)

(James doesn’t accept that. Not entirely.)

(But if his dad _is_ right -)

(Well. Then he’s going to be standing right beside Peter, he decides, and they’re both going to go down swinging.)

They use the cloak for pranks, so he ends up seeing a lot more ghostly overlays of people than he’d like, which is part of why he starts insisting that they should use it at night after most people have gone to bed.

Lily’s asleep in the common room when they sneak past one night, and James freezes in place because Lily’s overlay is even younger than Peter’s. 

She’s tiny, curled up in an armchair by the fire, and her overlay is beautiful and so, so young.

“James?” Sirius whispers.

James forces himself to start moving again.

He’s going to be nicer to Lily, he decides. Whether she hates him or not.

He can’t tell her. He can’t save her. But -

But life’s too short to waste, and her life is going to be shorter than most. He wants to help her make the most of it that she can.

(He checks Snivellus after that. Just - Just to see.)

(But Snivellus looks older than Pete’s ever going to get the chance to be, so that’s one worry James crosses off his list.)

That’s . . . kind of a thing, though, he realizes.

Because he’s seen more and more of the student body and sure, some of them look as old as Dumbledore under the cloak, but a lot of them -

 _Most_ of them.

Most of them don’t.

He starts keeping a list, and there’s a decent group that go around Pete’s time, and there’s a smaller group that makes it past that, but there’s a big group, a really big, sickeningly big group, that aren’t going to get any older than Lily will.

He has to run to the toilets to throw up when he figures that one out.

James is still eleven years old.

He doesn’t feel quite so much like a kid anymore.

He thinks about telling his parents, but they tell him so often that all they want is for him to be happy. If he lets them know just how hard their awesome gift has hit him -

No. He can’t.

He keeps writing every day, but he leaves incidents with the cloak out of it.

He decides it’s his life’s mission to make the whole castle laugh because according to an older student’s Muggles Studies homework, Muggles have figured out that the average person laughs about 300,000 times in their lifetime.

Most of the students aren’t going to have an average lifespan apparently, but that’s no reason they can’t get all 300,000 laughs in. James is going to make sure of it.

Lily is apparently not an outlier after all, but Lily is still special because Lily was the first to make him think about it, and because Lily is, well, Lily, and there’s something about her that makes him want to throw parchment wads at her in class until she turns to look at him.

That does not, apparently, help with the “make Lily happy” goal, so he’s going to have to stop doing that.

He’s been so busy trying to figure out what’s going to happen to his classmates that he hasn’t focused on what’s going on with Remus as much as he should. Fortunately, Sirius has been picking up his slack.

Something is wrong, that much is obvious, Sirius points out, and James realizes he’s right.

With first year drawing to a close, they’re running out of time, but they’ll figure it out next year. He’s sure of it.

They do figure it out.

Remus is a werewolf.

Werewolves, James learns, age faster than most wizards due to the stresses of their transformation. Their bodies wear out quickly; they go grey early and have a tendency to die young.

Suddenly, the ghostly image of Remus doesn’t seem so old after all.

And actually, now that he’s got more to compare it to . . . Sirius’s doesn’t seem all that old either.

And if all his friends are going to die - what? In their thirties? What will happen to him?

He’ll go with them, of course, he realizes almost immediately. Whatever happens, they’ll all go out together.

Maybe there’ll be a war.

The papers certainly seem to think they’re heading towards one.

Peter’s mum apparently told him not to worry about dating, that they’ll be plenty of time for that when his studies are over.

They’re in fourth year, and whenever James looks around the classroom, all he can think is that their studies aren’t the only things that are soon going to be over.

He tries not to let it him worry him too much. Life is short, so make it count, he’s always known that, and they’ve all got time left anyway.

But Lily.

Lily doesn’t.

Lily, he decides immediately, deserves to have as many dates as she can get, and it’s a travesty she hasn’t had any up until now. James is popular, available, and a twice Quidditch cup champion; obviously, he’s the perfect person to rectify this situation.

Unfortunately, she disagrees.

James is a little bewildered. He asked politely. He used the tried-and-true grin. He offered roses.

What went wrong?

He tests the grin out on a couple of other girls, just to see if maybe it only works on women his mum’s age, but no, he very definitely has appeal. 

Just not, apparently, to Lily.

It’s not that Lily’s miserable. It’s just that he can’t help but notice that her friendship with Snivellus is kind of fraying all around the edges, and the fact that she’s hung onto Snivellus this long, despite most of Gryffindor’s objections, means that she doesn’t have many friends to replace him with.

And the newspaper is full of stories of awful things happening to Muggleborns, and some of the Slytherins are getting pointedly nastier - and some of the purebloods from outside of Slytherin for that matter - and Lily gets this pinched look sometimes when she’s reading letters from home -

Lily could be happier is what he’s saying. And he wants to make her happier. He wants her to be as happy as she can get before it’s too late.

Unfortunately, he’s starting to wonder if the best contribution to her happiness he can make is leaving her alone.

On the other hand, she seems to get a perverse kind of enjoyment out of turning him down, so maybe he’s helping after all.

(“There are other girls, mate,” Sirius tells him in wry bemusement.)

(There are. Some of them will die even younger than Lily.)

(“I know,” James says, but he’s still watching that red hair as it disappears from view because Lily’s the key to this, somehow. If he can help her, if he can make just one difference, maybe that’ll be enough.)

Fifth year is the worst. 

He puts considerable effort into not letting his parents know that it’s terrible; he sends cheerful letters home crammed fully of funny stories and reports of good grades, and he puts considerable effort into talking his professors into not sending letters home when he gets detentions.

McGonagall is completely immune to this, despite the games he keeps winning for the Quidditch team, so he puts more effort into not getting into trouble while in Transfiguration, and he laughs off the remaining ones in his letters home.

His parents send reassuring letters back - a few detentions are nothing to worry about, a little mischief is nothing to be ashamed of, they know how strict dear Minnie can be, and, really, it was very unreasonable of her to make him scrub hospital pans for so long, they’ve sent lotions in case his hands got chapped and sweets to help put the memory behind him. They love him so, so much, and they’re so proud of him, and they can’t wait to see him when he comes home.

He reads the letters and saves them carefully because it has not escaped his attention that they look almost exactly like their ghosts now, and he is not a child anymore. He knows what that means.

So he fools his parents, and he fools his friends, right up until his friends become part of the problem because Sirius does something stupid, and Snivellus nearly dies, and half his friends aren’t talking to each other anymore, and Lily still hates him, and there are more murders in the Prophet every day, and Mary Macdonald looks exactly like her ghost, so despite what she says, he does not think he’ll see her after Easter and - and - and _and_ and -

He breaks down in a little room that he’s never seen before, and he’s hoping none of the others have found it either because that means they won’t see him sitting in it alone on the Map and come looking for him.

For some reason the room has boxes and boxes of handkerchiefs, handkerchiefs all the way up to the ceiling, and also chocolate. There’s a soft chair to sink into too, one he hadn’t noticed at first, and if someone had ever asked James to design a crying closet, this is exactly what he would have picked.

He doesn’t want to be alone, but there’s no one he can go to, not anymore, so he cries into his fist until the door opens and the face he most/least wants to see pokes in.

“I thought I heard crying, are you - oh. It’s you.” She frowns at him, and he hastily tries to wipe away the tears. Lily has more to be upset about than him, and she doesn’t even know it. She’s got no business comforting him.

She comes in anyway and sits beside him despite the fact he’s pretty sure she hates him.

Lily is kind of amazing.

“Rough day?” she offers tentatively.

“My parents are dying,” he tells her, and he doesn’t mean to, but he has to tell someone, and Lily doesn’t know them, can’t call him out on the half-truths he’s going to have to spin here. “Not - not right away, they might have another year or two, or even three, I don’t know, but they’re - they’re sick,” and that’s close enough, isn’t it? “They’re not going to make it too much longer.” He takes in a shuddering breath before hastily adding, “Please don’t tell anyone that. They don’t - they don’t want anyone to know.”

They don’t even know, he can’t say although surely his dad must guess. Surely he looked at Mum back when the cloak was still his - but course, he never could have looked at himself.

“I won’t tell,” she promises immediately. “Of course I won’t.” She hesitates. “Can I - can I do anything? I could get Sirius for you, or - “

He wants Padfoot, he does, but then Moony will feel betrayed, and he can’t walk that line right now, he can’t.

“Could you just sit with me? Just for a little while? I won’t say anything, I promise,” he says, and he tries for a grin, even it comes out rather weak.

“As long as you want,” she says, and apparently there was another chair hiding somewhere because she pulls one up and settles in right beside him. She reaches out tentatively and squeezes his hand, and it’s the best thing he’s felt in weeks.

When his eyes are finally dry and probably not too red, he pushes himself to his feet and tries for another smile. “Thanks,” he says. “Really, Evans. I mean it.” 

Her posture is a little warier now that he’s more or less back to normal, but she smiles back at him, even if it is cautiously, and he thinks - he thinks -

It’s a beautiful smile, and he’s glad he’s brought it to her face at least once.

Moony and Padfoot get past things eventually. Snape still hasn’t forgiven them, but Snape’s still hanging out with Rosier and Avery, so James doesn’t really care what he thinks.

And his parents are still fine, perfectly healthy no matter how many careful questions he asks, so he convinces himself he still has time. Wizards age slowly. He might still have all the time in the world.

He holds onto that happy little bubble of thought for half the summer until Sirius shows up in the middle of the night with bruises covering half his face.

His parents don’t think twice about taking him in, and James may be older now, but he still thinks he has the best parents in the world.

It’s a less comforting thought now that he’s so afraid he’s going to lose them.

In sixth year, Lily finally gives him a chance, and that’s all James needs.

He takes her to Hogsmeade every weekend they’re allowed. He learns her favorite candy, her favorite meal, her favorite authors, her favorite kind of jewelry -

Things aren’t enough, he knows, experiences are important too, and words, and picking Lily up and spinning her around before kissing her.

He wants her to be happy more than anything, and somewhere around the way he’s pretty sure that’s morphed into loving her

“You really believe in sweeping a girl off her feet, don’t you?” she asks him once, a little breathless, a little dry.

“I believe life’s too short to waste,” he says, and he smiles in the hopes that she won’t realize what he’s really telling her:

Your life’s too short to waste.

Then again, with the death toll mounting, a lot of people are thinking the same thing.

As soon as he’s of age, he joins the fight.

He knows all too well that none of them are immortal, but he wants to go down swinging when he goes.

(He loses his parents to dragon pox the summer after he graduates.)

(He doesn’t understand why they seem almost relieved when they go.)

Lily introduces him to the Muggle idea of a bucket list, and he insists on hearing every last item on hers.

It’ll be hard, since they’re in the middle of a war, but he’ll make sure she gets to check off every last item on that list.

He has to.

She says she wants to get married, someday, and he immediately starts hunting for a ring.

She looks so much like her ghost that he can no longer bear to look. He knows from his parents that they may still have a little time, but that doesn’t mean they have any time to waste.

He digs deeper and deeper into Potter family lore, desperate to find a solution.

He finds his answer in a children’s tale, and when he checks it against history, its results bear fruit.

No one with Potter blood has ever died while they owned the cloak. 

And no one without Potter blood has ever lived long after receiving it.

When Lily announces she’s pregnant, it’s not a solution, but it buys them time.

He is still going to lose Lily, but he doesn’t have to lose their child, and he’s still not sure he can survive this, but for a child, for _their_ child, he thinks maybe he can.

“The cloak is yours,” he whispers to the tiny life that is growing within her in the dead of night when Lily’s asleep. “I renounce my claim and give it to you.”

The next time he puts it on, he’s as invisible as ever, but when he looks at Lily, he sees her face and nothing else.

His gift has been given; he owns it no more.

And Lily will live for at least a few months longer.

Dumbledore expresses interest in the cloak and asks if he can borrow it. James laughs in his face.

Respectfully, but still.

He still can’t tell Lily everything, but they’re in the middle of a war. It’s not hard to convince her that they should talk about just-in-case.

They write letters to the child they now know is a son. Lily wants to name him Harry, and James doesn’t argue. He can’t bear to argue with her about much of anything now.

There are letters for every birthday, every Christmas, every train ride to Hogwarts and every train ride back. Letters for the first loose tooth and the first time he rides a broomstick; first house points gained, first Quidditch game won (just in case he plays, James insists, already sure he will), first Quidditch game lost, first detention, graduation, first job, his wedding, his first child, his second child, his third child - all the way up to seven, just in case he marries a Weasley. 

He wants Harry to know his mum loves him. He still thinks he’ll be around to tell him that, but he writes his own letters.

Just in case.

They make Sirius his godfather and Alice Longbottom his godmother because of all the people they trust to raise him, those are the ones that’ll be around the longest, as best as he can figure.

(Alice is going to outlive Sirius by decades, he’s pretty sure, but he knows Sirius better, so Sirius still goes down as primary guardian. He’ll last long enough to get Harry to adulthood, he’s pretty sure, as long as Harry doesn’t give him too many grey hairs.)

Sirius is a Black, which means he knows far too many stories about the Potter family for comfort, and he shoots James a sharp look when James asks him to take up the role. 

“Don’t tell me you’re planning your funeral yet, Prongs,” he says, and it’s a joke, but there’s an edge of desperation to it.

“Of course not,” James says, though the truth is, he doesn’t know. His father never gave any hints, and of course he never saw himself. “But - “ He looks away and says what little he can say, which is, with desperate cheerfulness, “I’m sneaking Lily to France over the weekend. It’s the last thing on her bucket list, you know.”

“She’ll have to make a new one,” Sirius says with forced cheer, but James meets his eyes because Harry’s on his way, and it’s important for someone to know.

“No,” James says. “She won’t.”

(“Life’s too short to waste,” he says when he surprises Lily with the portkey, and the well-worn phrase trips off his tongue with ease.)

(He freezes for just a moment after he says it because that was his parents’ motto for his childhood, and it occurs to him for the first time that maybe he’s lying to himself when he says his father didn’t give him any hints.)

(But he can’t bear to think that they’ll both be leaving Harry, so he pushes the thought away.)

He regrets giving Harry the cloak only once, and that’s after he’s born when he realizes he has no idea how long little Harry’s going to live.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself firmly. The cloak is Harry’s, which means Harry is safe. Harry will live at least long enough to have his own children to give it to.

He has to.

When the prophecy comes, they go into hiding since just because Harry will live doesn’t mean he can’t be hurt and because maybe, just maybe, he’s not as confident in children’s stories as he’d like to be.

He goes for Lily’s sake too. He can’t save her, but maybe he can keep her last few months from being nothing but endless battle.

He can feel the clock ticking down, but Sirius smuggled in a big bag of sweets for them, and Harry’s exhausted from racing around on his little broom, and James makes sure to whisper in his ear that he loves him more than the moon, more than the sun, more than magic itself before Lily goes to tuck him in for the night.

James decides to sneak another of the sweets from the kitchen while Lily’s upstairs even though he already had some after dinner. Life’s too short not to eat a few extra sweets, especially now, on Halloween night.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea if that figure about laughter is accurate, but I got it from here: https://mix949.com/how-many-times-will-you-blink-sneeze-and-laugh-out-loud-in-your-lifetime/


End file.
